Watching the city grow, I’m struck by the challenges it shares with Toronto. One is effective transit. In Khartoum, my 10-kilometre commute to the National Museum takes an hour and costs the equivalent of $5 or $6 Canadian each way. For that price, I’m packed into old mini-buses and pay for each transfer.

Something else the two burgs have in common: machete-wielding Janjaweed who like to pretend to be human Veg-o-Matics, slicing and dicing their way through the populace.